characteristics of tuberculosis?

I need to collect information about the characteristics of a disease.What kind of information do I need to look for if I was referring to TB?

What causes it? (Bacteria)
How the bacteria causes infection?
Characteristics of the bacteria
The characteristics of the infection e.g. signs and symptoms in a patient
What you might find in test results?
How is it treated?
Who is at risk?

What causes it? (Bacteria)
How the bacteria causes infection?
Characteristics of the bacteria
The characteristics of the infection e.g. signs and symptoms in a patient
What you might find in test results?
How is it treated?
Who is at risk?

When you say how the bacteria causes the infection and the characteristics of it what would you write?im a little confused I feel I'm getting the same information for both?

Yh there is a bit of overlap, so TB is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (or sometimes by Mycobacterium bovis) getting into the lungs. They are an interesting genus of bacteria because they are neither Gram positive or Gram negative, but you can describe them as aerobic, non-motile and non-spore forming. They possess a capsule with mycolic acid in them (this is important in the treatment of TB).

In terms of pathogenesis, the bacteria are phagocytosed by macrophages, but inhbit the phagolysosomes, and so they eventually form granulomas (balls of macrophages) with a central necrotic core, these can become fibrotic (i.e. scars) and this is essentially what TB is. Despite not being killed by the immune system, the bacteria do still activate it, so TB can present with fever and will just generally make you unwell.

I hope that helps, I don't know much about TB tbh, we didn't really get taught about it much in the first 2 years of medical school and you have to do a lot of self-teaching in 3rd year, so this is what I've gathered from my own studying lol

Thank. You so so much!!wondering if I can ask you,biological mechanisms have you basically explained that?theres so many terms I feel this has overlapped

I've answered the first 3 of my questions, you could technically talk more about the characteristics of M. tuberculosis such as how it is an acid-fast organism and takes a long time to culture (grows slowly). But that will be way beyond the level you need to know, it's kinda beyond my level lol.

If you're confused about anything I've said, I can explain better

Okay thank you,sorry one more thing though,I just don't understand what biological mechanisms mean,I'm a bit confused by it 😬

So a biological mechanism is how something in biology causes something else to happen, i.e. how the bacteria causes TB. I've explained the biological mechanism of TB. Hope that helps